Monday, September 01, 2008

Go Sweden!

Sweden bans teaching of religion as fact in schools.

This even applies to schools affiliated with religions, and not just public schools. It is the best political news I've heard in a really long time.

As something that adults choose to follow, well, I don't care if people decide they want to live as if an invisible man flooded the world over 40 days to cleanse it of sinners. But as something that you indoctrinate your children into, well, it's far worse than physical or sexual abuse.

I would imagine that a lot of people in the US strongly disagree with me. Then again, a lot of people in the US are idiots. While the Venn diagram wouldn't have those circles overlapping completely, well, there is enough.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I would highly doubt that teaching some 6-year old kid a bunch of fairy tales and labeling them as fact is worse than forcing yourself inside of that same kid.

It's very possible that down the road the former kid will get enough sense in her brain to realize 'hey, all that stuff I learned is BS', and then live a healthy life, whereas the latter kid will never be able to escape what happened to her.

Other than that minor quibble, I need to move to Sweden.

Duke said...

I don't think it's disputed that the mental and emotional effect of molestation is worse than the physical effects (in most cases, obvously).

With this you get a crippling effect on the mind, albeit without the sexual aspect. It's not like the sexual abuse would forever succumb you to being unable to think reasonably about pretty much anything.

I obviously don't condone either, but while the sexual abuse would potentially be more violent, the fact that the process of "nonthinking" instilled in a child would cripple them mentally would be a longer lasting effect.